Twenty-One, one of the most popular game shows from 1956 to 1958, involved two contestants competing to answer questions and earn a maximum of 21 points. The winner would be allowed to stay on for the next shows until they eventually lost. While at the time the show was popular for its entertainment value and competition, today, the show is infamous for its scandal. The first show of Twenty-One was a flop , as both contestants were not able to answer many of the questions and the sponsor of the show was very unhappy. As a result, the show turned to faking the shows.
The contestants were now essentially like actors - directed what to say, what questions to answer and which ones to miss, etc. Additionally, to garner more interest, the show introduced a college professor named Charles Van Doren to the show as a contestant. He challenged the then-champion, and they both tied for perfect scores four games in a row. This helped build interest in the show as the prize money increased and the rivalry continued. Finally, Doren won and continued his winning streak for several months. However, the one who lost, Herbert Stemple, was not happy to end his winning streak. There is actually a video of the show in which the two faced off, and we can see he is unhappy at the end. Additionally, at 10:10 in the video, we can see Stemple could have won the game if he answered correctly (he did know the answer), and was contemplating if he should have, but he finally decided to follow along with the script. Van Doren won and by the end of his several month streak, he won 129,000 dollars. However, Stemple was still unhappy at being forced to lose and decided to spoil the secret later on. The investigations that happened though did not show anything suspicious, but after months later when another game show was found to be scripted, there were further investigations. During these investigations, former contestants confessed that the show was scripted. This led to the downfall of the show.
Here is a link to the video I referred to above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVnGLks--oA
Sources:
https://www.history.com/news/quiz-show-scandal-fraud-jeopardy
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/quizshow-herbert-stempel/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-One_(game_show)
I found this article very engaging and interesting! After reading it, I wondered whether game shows today are also rigged, rehearsed, or still experience scandals. I found that in 1984 one man had studied patterns for the game show "Press Your Luck" by pausing his VCR to figure out exactly when to hit the buzzer to win the largest prize. I also found that after the "Twenty One" scandal, Congress passed amendments to the Communications Act of 1934 which effectively ended the game show.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/11-shocking-game-show-scandals